Reed: Top Two Will Give Voters More Choices

Washington voters can pick the candidate they want in the Aug. 19 primary, but some might be surprised to see two candidates from the same party on the ballot come November.

Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed talked about the state's new top-two primary system to members of the Washington State Association of Counties, in Bremerton for a conference this week. The top-two system will get its first test in August.
(CAROLYN YASCHUR | KITSAP SUN)

Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed talked about the state's new top-two primary system to members of the Washington State Association of Counties, in Bremerton for a conference this week. The top-two system will get its first test in August.
(CAROLYN YASCHUR | KITSAP SUN)

BREMERTON

Parties have less power, but voters might have more viable choices under the state's new "top-two" primary system, according to panelists speaking at a conference of statewide county officials on Thursday.

Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed, who developed the standards counties will go by for the Aug. 19 primary, said the election system Washington has is rooted in the state's heritage.

Reed was one of four panelists discussing the primary system at a lunchtime meeting of the Washington State Association of Counties conference, which concludes Friday. The group is meeting at the Kitsap Conference Center along Bremerton's downtown waterfront.

"The people feel with great conviction that they ought to control the election process," Reed said, a feeling that goes back to the 19th century.

Reed was joined in the discussion by former state Democratic Party Chairman Paul Berendt, Thurston County Auditor Kim Wyman and Kitsap County Republican Party Chairman Jack Hamilton.

Hamilton said he sees parties eventually responding to the top-two system by employing nominating conventions to field official candidates. That won't change the state's rules for candidates expressing party preference, though, and Hamilton said he can see a day when the party spends as much time explaining why someone isn't a Republican as it does campaigning for its candidate.

Wyman and Reed, however, said the system may result in voters getting more viable choices in November than they've had in previous general elections. If a district is solidly behind one party, getting two choices from within that party might better reflect the area.

"In a district where the choice is between a liberal or a conservative Democrat, that may be more of a choice than those districts have had for a while," Wyman said.

Berendt led the Democratic Party when it joined with Republicans, Libertarians, Freedom Socialists, Green Party members and the Washington State Grange in seeking to overturn the former blanket primary. He said the parties were thinking constitutionally when they took the state to court.

"The political parties had a core value when they entered into this long process, that is that we have constitutional rights that for a long time had been violated by the state of Washington and that was we have the right of free association," he said.

Voters passed Initiative 872 to establish the top-two primary, but the state implemented a "pick-a-party" system while the parties challenged top two.

The U.S. Supreme Court made it possible for the state to use the top-two system when it ruled in March that the parties couldn't prove they were harmed by it. They haven't been harmed, though, because the primary system hasn't been used yet. That changes on Aug. 19.

The actual implementation of the primary could provide the parties their justification to make the system back to court. "We're acutely aware that the parties are probably going to sue us," Wyman said.

Those who have been harmed the most, said Berendt and Hamilton, are third parties, because they will rarely find their candidates on general election ballots.

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